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Comment: Aviation industry is under fire
Evening Standard11 Mar 2008
The deal between the Civil Aviation Authority and airports operator BAA on landing charges is bad news for holidaymakers.
They and business travellers will find the steeper fees to be paid by airlines to BAA passed on to the consumer in the form of higher ticket prices.
BAA is complaining that the increases are not high enough but the company's predicament simply highlights the tensions that have been created in the industry by the sale of the operator to the highly indebted Spanish group Ferrovial. BAA is now under pressure from its bankers to extract as much money from its near-monopoly of the South-East's airports as it can.
This is a bad time for BAA to be losing friends. Consultation over a third runway at Heathrow has provoked outcry from residents, opposition from all three main Mayoral candidates, a threatened legal challenge from councils affected, and disturbing allegations that Department of Transport officials have rigged the calculations of environmental impact. It is worth asking whether the regulatory framework for this industry is really working.
BAA's critics point out that if short-haul services to destinations like Paris and Brussels that are well served by rail were cut, plenty of capacity would be freed up at Heathrow for those long-haul flights that are economically necessary. This might upset BA's preference for as big a Heathrow "hub" as possible but for the millions concerned about the environmental impact of airport expansion, that could be a price worth paying. At present, as Putney MP Justine Greening points out on our pages today, there is plenty of evidence of undue collusion between government and the aviation industry. Ministers need to realise that the row over the noise and pollution effects of a new runway is not just making much of west and south London angry, but is in its way a sign of decreasing trust in government.
